The late Richard Ben Cramer’s titanic deep dive into the 1987-88 presidential primary season is rightly regarded as the last word on the crazy-making rigors of electoral politics in this country. Hard to argue: books like Game Change, which purport to tell us what the candidates are really thinking, are but superficial imitators to the throne in comparison.

The level of commitment from Cramer here is awe-inspiring, likely rivaled only by Robert A. Caro’s multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson in the category of total immersion. But at least Caro has been writing for nearly 40 years about one man; Cramer somehow managed to follow six different campaigns around in real time over a two-year stretch, apparently leaving no stone unturned and unpacking each candidate’s life story in indelible detail (at great cost to his own health, it turns out).[Read more…]

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Best Books of the Year

2005: The History of Love
2006: The Chocolate War
2007: American Pastoral
2008: The Things They Carried
2009: Crossing to Safety
2010: Remainder
2011: Libra
2012: These Dreams of You
2013: The Orphan Master’s Son
2014: The Stories of John Cheever
2015: Against the Country
2016: Heroes of the Frontier